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People Were Standing Up Everywhere Shouting, "this Is Me! This Is Me!" Every Time You Looked At Them They Stood Up And Told You Who They Were, And The Truth Of It Was That They Had No More Idea Who Or What They Were Than He Had. They Believed Their Flashing Signs, Too. They Ought To Be Standing Up And Shouting, "this Isn't Me! This Isn't Me!" They Would If They Had Any Decency. "this Isn't Me!" Then You Might Know How To Proceed Through The Flashing Bullshit Of This World.

-Philip Roth

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People Were Standing Up

Philip Roth

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People Were Standing Up Everywhere Shouting, "this Is Me! This Is Me!" Every Time You Looked At Them They Stood Up And Told You Who They Were, And The Truth Of It Was That They Had No More Idea Who Or What They Were Than He Had. They Believed Their Flashing Signs, Too. They Ought To Be Standing Up And Shouting, "this Isn't Me! This Isn't Me!" They Would If They Had Any Decency. "this Isn't Me!" Then You Might Know How To Proceed Through The Flashing Bullshit Of This World.

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The Road To Hell Is Paved With Works-in-progress.

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How Can One Say, 'no, This Isn't A Part Of Life,' Since It Always Is? The Contaminant Of Sex, The Redeeming Corruption That De-idealizes The Species And Keeps Us Everlastingly Mindful Of The Matter We Are.

I Turn Sentences Around. That's My Life. I Write A Sentence And Then I Turn It Around. Then I Look At It And I Turn It Around Again. Then I Have Lunch. Then I Come Back In And Write Another Sentence. Then I Have Tea And Turn The New Sentence Around. Then I Read The Two Sentences Over And Turn Them Both Around. Then I Lie Down On My Sofa And Think. Then I Get Up And Throw Them Out And Start From The Beginning.

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Everybody Has A Hard Job. All Real Work Is Hard. My Work Happened Also To Be Undoable. Morning After Morning For 50 Years, I Faced The Next Page Defenseless And Unprepared. Writing For Me Was A Feat Of Self-preservation. If I Did Not Do It, I Would Die. So I Did It. Obstinacy, Not Talent, Saved My Life.

You Take Off Your Clothes And You're In Bed With Somebody, And That Is Indeed Where Whatever You've Concealed, Your Particularity, Whatever It May Be, However Encrypted, Is Going To Be Found Out, And That's What All The Shyness Is All About And What Everybody Fears.

The Legend Engraved On The Face Of The Jewish Nickel- On The Body Of Every Jewish Child!- Not In God We Trust, But Someday You'll Be A Parent And You'll Know What It's Like.

The Danger With Hatred Is, Once You Start In On It, You Get A Hundred Times More Than You Bargained For. Once You Start, You Can't Stop.

The Only Obsession Everyone Wants: 'love.' People Think That In Falling In Love They Make Themselves Whole? The Platonic Union Of Souls? I Think Otherwise. I Think You're Whole Before You Begin. And The Love Fractures You. You're Whole, And Then You're Cracked Open.

When He [joe Lewis] Was Asked Upon His Retirement About His Long Career, Joe Sweetly Summed It Up In Just Ten Words. 'i Did The Best I Could With What I Had'.

There Were Many Hours When I Never Quite Know How I'd Gotten There Or Why I Stayed.

Each Book Starts From Ashes.

I Write Fiction And I'm Told It's Autobiography, I Write Autobiography And I'm Told It's Fiction, So Since I'm So Dim And They're So Smart, Let Them Decide What It Is Or It Isn't.

The Horror Of Being Caged Has Lost Its Thrill.

There Is Truth And Then Again There Is Truth. For All That The World Is Full Of People Who Go Around Believing They've Got You Or Your Neighbor Figured Out, There Really Is No Bottom To What Is Not Known. The Truth About Us Is Endless. As Are The Lies.

'haunted By The Past' Is A Commonplace Phrase Because It's A Commonplace Experience. Even If One Is Not, Strictly Speaking, 'haunted', The Past Is Perpetually With One In The Present, And The Longer It Grows And The Further It Recedes The Stronger Its Presence Seems To Become.

The Book Can't Compete With The Screen. It Couldn't Compete Beginning With The Movie Screen. It Couldn't Compete With The Television Screen And It Can't Compete With The Computer Screen I Don't Think. And Now We Have All Those Screens So Against All Those Screens I Think The Book Can't Measure Up.

--nor Had I Understood Til Then How The Shameless Vanity Of Utter Fools Can So Strongly Determine The Fate Of Others

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People Are Unjust To Anger - It Can Be Enlivening And A Lot Of Fun.

You Put Too Much Stock In Human Intelligence, It Doesn't Annihilate Human Nature.

Nothing Has A More Sinister Effect On Art Than The Artist's Desire To Prove That He's Good. The Terrible Temptation Of Idealism!

I Am Marked Like A Road Map From Head To Toe With My Repressions. You Can Travel The Length And Breadth Of My Body Over Superhighways Of Shame And Inhibition And Fear.

Literature Isn't A Moral Beauty Contest. Its Power Arises From The Authority And Audacity With Which The Impersonation Is Pulled Off; The Belief It Inspires Is What Counts.

I Was A Biography In Constant Motion, Memory To The Marrow Of My Bones.

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Is An Intelligent Human Being Likely To Be Much More Than A Large-scale Manufacturer Of Misunderstanding?

For A Pure Sense Of Being Tumultuously Alive, You Can't Beat The Nasty Side Of Existence.

That Can Happen When People Die, The Argument With Them Drops Away And People So Flawed While They Were Drawing Breath That At Times They Were All But Unbearable Now Assert Themselves In The Most Appealing Way, And What Was Least To Your Liking The Day Before Yesterday Becomes In The Limousine Behind The Hearse A Cause Not Only For Sympathetic Amusement But For Admiration

I Haven't Written A Word Of Fiction Since 2009. I Have No Desire To Write Fiction. I Did What I Did And It's Done. There's More To Life Than Writing And Publishing Fiction. There Is Another Way Entirely, Amazed As I Am To Discover It At This Late Date.

It's The Little Questions From Women About Tappets That Finally Push Men Over The Edge.

Questions And Answers

The Book Really Comes To Life In The Rewriting.

To Read A Novel Requires A Certain Kind Of Concentration, Focus, Devotion To The Reading. If You Read A Novel In More Than Two Weeks, You Don't Read The Novel Really.

Let's Hope The First Comes First.

How Far Back Must We Go To Discover The Beginning Of Trouble?

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George A. Moore

Francis Scott Key

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